Innovation and sustainability

Research focus

The Peer review has evaluated this group as Good

The research unit operates in the field of technological and typological innovations for new constructions and recuperation operations, investigating their impact on project praxes and their relationship with the realities of production in the building sector. The objective of stimulating building technology innovation in the area of sustainability, always maintaining a strict connection with industry and clients, can be verified in practice through the application of research hypotheses to advanced experimental operations. The trend towards highly energy efficient buildings, which has demonstrated strong growth over the past years, has brought about a need to update construction methods as well as the adoption of project strategies that can more fully integrate the variables of “building”, “installation” and “climate” in an architecturally unified vision that, in turn, must inevitably evolve. In recuperation projects, the above factors need to be integrated into an existing morphological, social and building context, with obvious repercussions on the range of effective available project options. Considering the ever more rapid changes that characterise our society as well as our life- and work-styles, the effect on architecture is that of an ever-increasing need for flexibility in the types and technologies used: in other words, there is an increasing orientation towards adaptable buildings, ones whose characteristics can be modified in line with changes in environmental conditions. In the case of new constructions, the principal research lines are as follows: - studies into the impact of the more recent norms on energy consumption containment (received in European Directive 2002/91/CE) on projects and construction, in particular those norms regarding the levels of thermal isolation and the exploitation of solar radiation; - studies into “climatically sensitive” buildings for mild climates and, in particular, into project and technological strategies aimed at attaining high levels of comfort with limited concomitant energy expenditure in the warmer seasons; - studies into dry-layer technologies, in other words those more congruent with the general objective of increasing functional and operational quality, and in particular the containment of energy consumption; - studies into innovative structural components as well as opaque and transparent coverings; studies, projects and experiments into innovative components and energetically sensitive construction systems; - the application of strategies cited in the norms (Building Regulations); - studies into components and technologies easily modifiable and exchangeable in the face of changes and new needs in the internal and external spaces of buildings. In the case of renovations, the objectives of the Research Unit are to profitably use, recuperate and restore the techno-typological function of existing abandoned 75 or degraded buildings that characterise a particular territory, with special reference to experimentation with sustainable recuperation technologies. The principal research lines are as follows: - recuperation and techno-typological restoration of buildings in large centres of economically popular construction conducted after the Second World War using heavy prefabricated technologies; - the profitable use, recuperation and restoration of function (including through the use of experimental innovative and sustainable technologies) to existing abandoned or degraded buildings that characterise a particular territory, with special reference to small centres in mountainous or hilly regions, in rural nuclei, in areas alongside lakes and rivers, State properties and those of industrial archaeological interest in the Lombardy territory. - the energy-related requalification of the existent building heritage (in conformity with D.L. 192/2005 and succ. mod.), with particular attention to the development of solutions targeted at the functional restoration of coverings, these being an element responsible for various exchanges between the inside and outside of a building.

Dipartimento di afferenza

Dipartimento di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Ambiente Costruito (BEST)

Docenti afferenti

Full Professors
Emilio Pizzi
Giuseppe Turchini
Ettore Zambelli
Associate Professors Manuela Grecchi
Marco Imperadori
Assistant Professors
Laura Malighetti
Gabriele Masera
Matteo Ruta